Comment

For me, Tuesday's most interesting announcement was the change of iPad connector from Lightning to USB-C. Not because of the connector itself, but because of where it shows where some of Apple's attention for the iPad is being focused.

External display support via USB-C was explicitly mentioned and I think that's really important to how we might start to think about apps on the iPad.

Imagine a world where some kinds of apps were designed to be used with an external monitor and keyboard, with maybe the main iPad display flat on the desk showing a secondary screen for interaction. It certainly gives the iPad a different feel and opens up plenty of opportunity for "desktop" style apps.

It's going to be interesting to see what we all do with it!

Dave Verwer

News

Twitter lit up a bit this week with the news that IAP information is no longer available on the App Store page for an app. I actually quite like this change though! Many apps on the store have all sorts of combinations of circumstances that change the price of IAPs and a generic list of all of them on the App Store page was often misleading. Now, you get to feature just the IAPs you want to highlight. You get to tell the story.

Update: Apparently this was a bug, and has already been fixed! Oops! I still think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if this is how it worked though 😂

How about a new set of APIs to go with our glossy new pencils? Here they are. What's potentially more interesting than the API is the guidance around how to use the double taps on the new button, and it's not just that we should do whatever we want with them. See this new section of the HIG and this new tech talk video for details.

Sponsored Link

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When UIStackView isn't quite enough and UITableView feels unwieldy for managing disparate collections of controls, where do you go? Why not start with this library from Airbnb engineering. What I love about libraries like this is that they are battle tested. It's used in over 200 screens in the Airbnb app and has been in use for two years. It should work well! 👍

The topic of slow date formatters comes up so often that you'd think we would have all had it completely figured out by now, but no! William Boles goes over the common issue of speed, but then dives into why using a shared formatter can also backfire and finishes up with the ultimate date formatting helper?

What happens when a button title some other text that you designed on your shiny new iPhone XS Max in landscape mode doesn't fit on an iPhone SE in portrait mode? Do you compromise and shorten the text on both devices? Not necessarily. Keith Harrison explains.

Business and Marketing

As we moved into the second half of 2018, hyper-casual games topped downloads charts, video content fueled growth for downloads and consumer spend.

Yes, it's depressing that people are spending all of their money on virtual currency. But, increased spending on mobile devices is good for us all in the long run. This platform needs to be somewhere people are comfortable spending money.